Slopwatch: Ponzi Schemes Promoted by Media Companies, Linux Journal Turning Its 30-Year Reputation to Dust, and Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli Plagiarising, As Usual
There is an "industry" out there that is selling a Ponzi scheme, in effect participating in economic fraud. There are many so-called 'news' sites that are participants and enablers. We intend to name and shame them more often. They're no better than sites that exist for the sole purpose of promoting fake coins. We're meant to think that those "coins" are bad, whereas "hey hi" (AI) is innovation, hence good and also inevitable (FOMO). Slopwatch focuses on the sort of junk they are selling.
As we said yesterday, they already hop onto QC. Quantum computing is not new. ML (not the same as LLMs) is not new. VR is not new (even if spun as "AR" or "metaverse"). The Ponzi schemes latch onto lies of "innovation" or "breakthrough" where there is none, enabled and emboldened by corrupt, bribed, complicit media.
Then there are the "case studies" of how bad LLMs actually are. Consider the latest from Linux Journal:
Mindless garbage. Words are put together by an LLM. Instead of people turning to the real announcement/s they might search the Web and find this slop about "Python 3.13.5".
Here's another example, this one from the Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli, who lost his job for his serial slopping.
All he did there was plagiarism of real articles, e.g. [1, 2], and the people whom he plagiarises hate his guts. We know this. We hear complaints about him.
He's just a con man playing with LLMs.
He also took many articles about COSMIC and made this slop piece:
Of course those pieces add nothing of value and almost nobody will bother reading these unless search engines are conned into delivering them as search results (Fagioli also tries to trick Slashdot into citing them). So they are spammers and SEO con artists. That's just what they are. So are the fake "journalists" who get assigned to write puff pieces about "AI". Yes, they get paid; to help some people defraud other people.
This bubble will end up very badly. We certainly hope that all the publishers that promoted this bubble will suffer the consequences. This morning we saw the Singaporean publisher "The Straits Times" publishing this headline: "Has Japan already capitulated in great global AI race?" (loaded question with the ludicrous term "AI race", similar to "AI arms race").
When it comes to a PONZI SCHEME, Japan "is lagging behind." GOOD FOR JAPAN!
They similarly love shaming countries for not being overpopulated or for doing something about overpopulation, e.g. by insinuating this is a health issue ("infertility") rather than sound decision-making. █